First, Said is one of 200-plus unindicted co-conspirators named by prosecutors in the HLF case. In particular, Said was a member “of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee” which, as the government argued last year’s trial, was formed in the 1980s and coordinated support for Hamas here.

The trust board on which Asbahi and Said served in 2000 is itself controlled by the North American Islamic Trust — also on the HLF unindicted co-conspirators list.

Now take a breath. We’re almost done.

Said is the imam at the Bridgeview Mosque in Illinois near Chicago. The mosque has been the center of controversy for its fundamentalist bent for years, and is itself central to the HLF story.

Bridgeview is the same mosque where a man named Muhammad Salah was once a leader. He is credited with tipping off investigators to HLF’s Hamas ties after he spilled the beans to Israeli agents who detained him in 1993. The Israelis, of course, tipped off their American counterparts.